I've been teaching at Skagit Valley College and Whatcom Community College for nearly a year now, and wow, have I learned a lot! Being a perfectionist in some areas of my life, I've been consuming photography books to learn more so that I can be a better teacher. This week I've been reading about fireworks photos, and wanted to try them out before I actually teach the topic.
We planted ourselves at an awesome vantage point last night, just off the waterfront in Blaine. I took about 100 fireworks pictures and am sharing my discoveries here. I hope this isn't too techy, but some of you will enjoy that aspect! I used my 70-200mm lens on my Canon 5D Mark II and my Bogen tripod - super sturdy. I shot everything on bulb, which means I pressed the shutter and held it for as long as I chose. Composing was tricky, because my tripod isn't fluid enough to follow the action, so mostly I hoped something would fall within the frame. That said, I love the close-up pictures much more than the wider angle shots. They were all shot at ISO 400. The 2nd and 3rd images were shot at f/2.8 and the rest at f/8. The last two images were 9 and 11 second exposures.
I mostly played with two concepts. In the first, I moved the focus ring during the shot, so that the fireworks either went in or out of focus. These were all one-second photos. In the second, I kept the camera open for as long as 11 seconds, and used my gray card (a piece of gray mat board) to hold over my lens when nothing exciting was in the sky. This is the modern version of a multiple exposure.
Post-production in Lightroom, I increased vibrance and saturation a bit, and played with the levels, increasing or decreasing the highlights as needed and adding black and increasing contrast. Because the exposures were long, I had some trouble with the smoke clouds, and increasing the contrast helped diminish their presence.
My favs were the swerving focus pictures - they remind of of closeups of flowers or sea anemone – crazy! Have fun trying this out - next year!
